LA TAILLE, MAURICE de. - Jesuit theologian, b. at Semblancay (Indre-et-Loire) on 30 Nov. 1872, d. in Paris on 23 Oct. 1933. A religious at Canterbury (1890), he studied philosophy at Jersey, theology in Paris and Lyon. In 1901 he was ordained a priest at Tours. A disciple of Fathers Bainvel, De Grandmaison, Harent and Le Bachelet, he turned at once to theological studies. Professor of dogmatics at the Catholic faculty of Angers (1905-16), in 1919 he was called to the Gregorian University, where his gifts as a brilliant and inspired expositor were widely appreciated.
A theologian of acute intellect and vast culture, from as early as 1904 he began the series of his numerous articles, which appeared in the leading journals, especially in the Etudes, with which he attacked modernism to its foundations. At the same time he matured the masterly eucharistic work that made him famous, the Mysterium fidei (Paris 1921; 3rd ed. ibid. 1933). From a rapid contact with the Letter to the Hebrews, there took shape in de L. T.'s mind, in its broad outlines, the vast synthesis on the sacrifice of Christ and of the Church, which in a decade of intense work he documented with extraordinary erudition. Drafted in an elegant Latin (at times too finely turned), constructed with an internal logic to which the author bends the multiform abundance of texts, with pages rich in suggestive intuitions, pervaded by a current of deeply felt mysticism, the ample volume (1300 columns) commanded the admiration of many, the attention of all (for the content of the work, v. MESSA). It should be noted that the rest of his all too brief existence (he was of extremely delicate health, which frequently prevented him from carrying to completion the courses begun with great ardour) he consecrated to the defence and clarification of his sacrificial ideas (strongly attacked from various quarters) in learned articles in the Gregorianum, in the Ephemerides theologicae Locanienses and elsewhere. He popularized the central idea of the Mysterium Fidei in the sparkling pages of the Esquisse du mystère de la Foi, suivie de quelques éclaircissements (Paris 1924) and in a dense exposition in M. Brillant, Eucharistia, Encyclopédie populaire sur l'Eucharistie (Paris 1934, pp. 151-206). The ingenious and original article Activation créée par acte incréé (in Recherches de science religieuses, 18 [1928], pp. 253-68) has led some to think that de L. T. was preparing another great work on Grace, which would have borne the title Mysterium Caritatis. After the Vatican Council perhaps no work has so profoundly influenced the development of eucharistic theology as the Mysterium Fidei.
Bibliography3 works
Antonio Piolanti